For nearly two years, the missing 8-year-old had been living in
the shelter for homeless families at the former D.C. General Hospital, a
grim place with bedbugs and no playground. Relatives said the
second-grader, who slept with a teddy bear she named “Baby,” wanted out
so desperately that she would fake asthma attacks to stay at their
homes. Adults who were close to her at her old school described her
arriving with filthy clothes, dirty hair and an empty stomach, and they
said she often didn’t want to leave.

“She was like, ‘Can I stay?’ ” said Regina Pixley, a security
guard at Ferebee-Hope Elementary School, which Relisha attended from
pre-kindergarten until last June, when the school closed. “And we were
like, ‘Baby, you have to go home.’ ”

It has been more than a month since Relisha’s family has seen her and more than a week since the police search for her became a “recovery mission.” People who knew her now talk about her in both the present and past tense, revealing in the same breath their hopes and fears.

But
whether Relisha is alive or dead, the instability of her life —
evictions from apartments where gunfire was common, weeks at motels and
then months at the homeless shelter with a troubled mother and three
brothers — put her on the radar of school administrators, social
workers, shelter employees and volunteers, who make up the safety net
for the city’s vulnerable children.

The signs of a child
struggling were there: A cheerleading coach at times helped her wash up
in a restroom at school, where clean clothes were kept on hand for her.
Social workers responded to at least three reports of abuse or neglect
within the family, with police called at least twice. Shelter volunteers
noticed a little girl who was eager to participate in two after-school
programs but who often wasn’t there. And family members were aware that
the girl who dressed as a princess for Halloween was being swapped among
them and that, in recent months, a new person had joined her rotation
of caregivers: Kahlil Tatum, a 51-year-old shelter custodian who took
her for sleepovers at his house and on outings to the movies and the
mall. Then simply took her.

A deep look at Relisha’s life — and the adults she came in contact with before walking away with Tatum, who was found dead last week —
shows that the details of her disappearance may be unique but the
circumstances of her life were not. In recent days, officials have used
the phrase “other Relishas”
to describe children who live on the edge but whose chances of falling
are hard to predict, even by people supposed to catch them.

“Who
failed Relisha?” said Shannon Smith, the cheerleading coach who looked
after her. “I believe everybody failed that girl. The school, the
system, the doctors, the police and everybody else that should have had
something to do with her.”

‘I wonder why I have kids’

In a video her mother shot, Relisha dances in the family’s
yellow-walled room at the shelter. Skinny arms and legs flapping, she
bounces to the beat against a bare backdrop of six twin beds pushed
together. Her three younger brothers leap around her, all energy. There
is joy in Relisha’s movements, but her expression remains flat. If she
is smiling, it is hard to tell.

Young,
27, also lived in shelters as a child. She was 6 years old when she
entered Virginia’s foster-care system, where she bounced between homes
until the age of 18, relatives said. About a year later, she had
Relisha.

Young’s Facebook page depicts a woman who brags one day
about how she dresses her children — “all got Helly Hansen coat on their
little backsides” — and on another day how she is “high as a kite.” Her
posts are filled with obscenities, but they also reveal self-doubt.

“Sometime
I wish my mother didn’t have me and sometimes I wonder how many people
wanna see me dead and sometimes I wonder why I have kids and sometimes I
wonder why the world is the way it is,” she wrote two years ago. “I
wonder who I am.”

Shortly after Relisha was born — on Oct. 29,
2005, at Washington Hospital Center — the family moved into an Edgewood
apartment complex where gang members were neighbors and shootings were
common. Once, police descended on the Northeast D.C. apartments when a
man pulled a gun from behind an outdoor air-conditioning unit and,
according to a witness, “began firing at everyone around Edgewood.”
Seven people were wounded.

The family left in 2007. Public records
show that at least five of Young’s former landlords filed cases against
her for breaching tenant contracts, with the latest eviction notice
coming shortly before the family wound up at a motel off Bladensburg
Road for three months and then entered the shelter in 2012.

Relisha,
who sometimes called the shelter “the G,” hated it there, relatives
said. She would tell them that it was “infested and the food ain’t
good,” said her aunt Ashley Young, 26.

The shelter, run out of an old public hospital beside
a morgue and a methadone clinic, was intended to be a temporary
solution to overcrowding elsewhere when the city started moving homeless
families there more than a decade ago. Now, nearly 600 children call it
home. In a report last year, the Washington Legal Clinic described
complaints from residents about heating outages, mice, and bedbugs and
other insects. Raccoons have been spotted inside bathrooms and closets.

Ashley
Young said her niece would fake illnesses to stay at her place or beg
to go to her grandmother’s home, where she had a cat named Missy. When
Relisha began spending time with Tatum, her aunt said, she viewed it as
another “escape route” for the girl.

Shamika Young said that she met Tatum in 2005and
that her daughter considered him a godfather. Relisha would come back
from their outings with a new outfit or a manicure, relatives said. For
Christmas, he bought her a tablet device. Few in Relisha’s family
questioned his generosity.

“I never got a bad vibe about him,”
said Antonio Wheeler, 28, the father of Relisha’s two youngest brothers.
Irving Rudd, the father of Relisha and another brother, did not respond
to efforts to contact him.

When Relisha couldn’t spend time with
Tatum, she would make her aunt call him, Ashley Young said. “She would
say: ‘Why, God-daddy? Why don’t you come get me?’ ” Young said. Whenever
Tatum took her, she added, he “always brought her back when he was
supposed to.”

Until the day he didn’t.

On March 19, police
began the search for Relisha after a social worker from Payne Elementary
School, concerned about her mounting absences, showed up at the shelter
and discovered the truth about Tatum, who had been listed on school
records as Relisha’s doctor. By that point, Relisha had been with Tatum
since Feb. 26, police said, but no one had reported her missing. On
March 20, police found Tatum’s wife, Andrea Tatum, facedown on a motel
bed in Oxon Hill, shot in the head. Tatum was found 11 days later in a
Northeast Washington park shed, dead from an apparent self-inflicted
gunshot wound.

Relisha’s grandmother Melissa Young, who signed
Relisha up for Girl Scouts and laughs about how she ate more shortbread
cookies than she sold, now questions why the shelter staff didn’t
notice that her granddaughter was gone. Every night, staff members
knock on doors and ask how many kids are in each room, but they don’t
open the doors to look, she said. If they had, they would have seen
Relisha’s bed empty many nights.

On
her phone, Young keeps a photo of her granddaughter in a lime-green
outfit she bought her. Relisha, her hands on her hips, striking a pose,
stares into the camera. She’s not smiling but offers a sassy pout. The
front of her shirt says, “Love Me.”

‘A beautiful girl’

Relisha didn’t just ask Shannon Smith if she could join the
cheerleading team at Ferebee. She showed her that she had been watching
the other girls by thrusting her arms in the air and spelling
V-I-C-T-O-R-Y.

“I was surprised that little girl spelled that
word,” Smith recalled. “I was like, ‘Oh yeah, she’s one of ours.’ ”
Smith watched over her, offering rides when needed and calling her
mother when she didn’t show up for school. Then there were days she
washed her up and fixed her hair.

“Once you gave her a hug and
cleaned her up, she was just a beautiful girl,” Smith said. “All that
girl wanted was to be hugged.”

Smith and Pixley, the security
guard at the school, said there were many days when they saw Relisha and
one of her brothers waiting for a ride home long after most of the
other children had left. Smith recalled how once, when she returned late
from chaperoning a school trip and found the two there, she called
their mother and offered to drive them home. Smith said Young didn’t
give an address and hung up. Young then called the school and directed
her children to leave on foot, Smith said.

What happened next
could not be corroborated with authorities, but Smith and Pixley said
that the children were found late that night at a nearby laundromat
and that the police and the District’s Child and Family Services Agency
(CFSA) were notified. Melissa Young denied that her grandchildren were
ever found at a laundromat and said Shamika would often go hungry so the
children could eat.

Shamika Young also said she has been a good
mother to Relisha and her brothers. “Think what you want to think,” she
said. “Only God knows the truth.”

Mindy Good, a CFSA spokeswoman,
said that by law she can’t speak about individual cases. But
confidential files read to The Washington Post show that the agency
sustained complaints at least three times involving Young’s children.
The first was lodged in July 2007, when Relisha was almost 2 years old. A
social worker noted “great concern” for the girl, who showed signs of
abuse, according to the file. But authorities “were unable to determine
how these injuries happened.” Two law enforcement officials who spoke on
the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk
publicly about the case said police were called but an investigation
concluded that no assault had occurred.

Three
years later, in April 2010, a social worker noted that one of Relisha’s
brothers was not getting the medical attention he needed after surgery.
The file says the family was living in “environmentally unsafe
conditions,” with debris and cigarette butts scattered throughout the
apartment.

The last incident occurred in November, while the
family was at the shelter. A social worker, according to the file, noted
a “lack of supervision and abuse.” One of Relisha’s brothers had been
“thrown to the ground” and slapped until his lip bled, the report says.
The law enforcement officials said police intervened but got conflicting
stories about who hit the boy. No charges were filed.

Relisha’s
relatives described all three reports as exaggerated or false. In each
case, the children remained in the home. Only after Relisha went missing
were her three brothers placed in foster care.

CFSA Director
Brenda Donald declined to be interviewed. But in a letter to The Post,
she wrote that “the fact that CFSA does not remove a child as a result
of a substantiated abuse or neglect allegation does not mean we do not
provide any services.”

When Donald took over the agency in 2012,
the District had one of the nation’s highest removal rates and one of
the lowest in placing children with relatives once they were taken from
the home, Good said. A year earlier, the city’s Citizen Review Panel,
which is charged with monitoring the agency, issued a report that called
for “significant reforms to prevent unnecessary removals — and to
prevent the unnecessary harm they cause to children and families.”

As
of April 2, the agency was serving 2,973 children. Of those, 61 percent
were at home with their families, the result of an intentional effort.
Good said a particular challenge for the agency comes in dealing with
families who teeter constantly between stability and crisis; they aren’t
in dire enough straits to require drastic interventions, but they
remain troubled. Social workers have to rely on their best judgments,
she said, “without the benefit of any foolproof method for predicting
human behavior or other variables.”

“All
of us in social services work to serve so many fragile families,” Good
said. “We know the stakes are high. Succeeding makes a wonderful
difference. But when even best efforts aren’t enough, it’s devastating.”

Preventing ‘other Relishas’

In the days before divers plunged into the Anacostia River,
looking for what many hoped they wouldn’t find — Relisha’s body wrapped
in one of the 42-gallon trash bags Tatum had purchased before killing
himself — the girl’s family offered tearful pleas for her return on
television.

But
even as they held on to hope, they began pointing fingers. At that same
vigil, several relatives huddled together, screaming about who had lost
Relisha — accusing one another of not doing enough, not crying enough,
not worrying enough.

Shamika Young, who has been accused of giving
police conflicting information about her daughter’s whereabouts and
lying to the school about her many absences, is now under investigation
by a grand jury for obstruction of justice. She has gone into hiding but
said she wants the public to know: “It’s not my fault.”

Schools
Chancellor Kaya Henderson has also pushed back against critics who say
Payne failed Relisha. One school official said Payne’s social worker,
who noticed how Relisha and her brothers struggled to adjust to their
new classrooms, had Payne staffers check in with them and referred
Relisha’s family to a community-based group for more support.

Although
Relisha was absent more than 30 days before a school social worker
alerted child welfare officials, most of those absences were excused by
family members who said the child was in the care of a “Dr. Tatum.”
Henderson said the only reason anybody started looking for Relisha is
because a school social worker went to the shelter and realized that
“something was not right.”

Henderson says the system has devoted
increasing resources to addressing truancy, but it remains an enormous
problem linked to issues beyond the district’s ability to solve. “We
teach children, that’s our thing,” she said. “We can co-locate services,
we can collaborate with other agencies — but we cannot solve the
problems of the world in the schoolhouse.”

The
Community Partnership for the Prevention of Homelessness, the nonprofit
agency being paid $13 million a year by the city to run the shelter,
has also come under fire. At a recent D.C. Council committee hearing,
Sue Marshall, executive director of the agency, defended the shelter’s
policies. She acknowledged that the shelter had fired at least four
employees for having inappropriate relationships with residents. But not
Tatum, who gave toys and money to shelter children before Relisha’s
abduction.

For many advocates, Relisha has become more than a face
on an Amber Alert. She’s a potent symbol. “How do we prevent this from
happening again?” asked Anniglo Boone, executive director of the
Consortium for Child Welfare, a coalition of nonprofit agencies. “How do
we prevent this for other Relishas?”

“Other Relishas” — two words
that have become the legacy of a little girl who loved pink and purple
and wanted to be a model or a singer. A child who threw herself into art
projects and helped volunteers set up for the shelter’s after-school
programs. At the Freedom School, operated in the shelter by the National
Center for Children and Families, project director Dennita Ferrell
recalled how Relisha loved the program’s motivational song, “(Something
Inside) So Strong.” She jumped to her feet whenever it came time to sing
it.

“Something inside so strong,” Relisha belted out. “I know that I can make it. Though you’re doing me wrong, so wrong.”

Before Relisha Rudd went missing, the 8-year-old longed to escape D.C.’s homeless shelter

Smith and Pixley, the security
guard at the school, said there were many days when they saw Relisha and
one of her brothers waiting for a ride home long after most of the
other children had left. Smith recalled how once, when she returned late
from chaperoning a school trip and found the two there, she called
their mother and offered to drive them home. Smith said Young didn’t
give an address and hung up. Young then called the school and directed
her children to leave on foot, Smith said.

What happened next
could not be corroborated with authorities, but Smith and Pixley said
that the children were found late that night at a nearby laundromat

This is where I stopped reading. Let me at this triflin baby maker, I will f*ck her life up...

One thing I have learned about life is drugs and poverty and the cycle of abuse, are so terrible that something must be done. I find it comical that the "mother" feels she has done nothing wrong but that is her "mentality" and what she has observed her entire life. SO for her....this is normal behavior.

I also find it sad that the girl's natural father is not saying anything...cause he is probably just as "dirty" so he is staying out the PRESS.

Well the family is SUING THE GOVERNMENT NOW....Which I expect....this same father and mother in the Relisha Rudd case will later sue. You must remember, the goal is to get a settlement, by the time the government pays lawyers all these man hours....they might just settle for 300,000. That is the goal nowadays...it does not matter if you are RIGHT OR WRONG, not that they did not get their family member mental health help...but the goal is a settle.

Relisha's mother herself did not have a good life. Now it makes sense why so many family members are coming out of nowhere but none could take care of her and her siblings when they were living in the shelter.Relisha's grandmother is sh!t, her aunt is sh!t and everyone else in that family didn't care. Relisha's mom was not ready to have a kid. Raised by foster care, she had the kid too young, and she wanted the burden of caring for Relisha gone. It says in the article that Relisha was eager to participate in the after-school programs, her mom didn't care to take her there. What was this woman doing? Certainly not looking for a job.

The shelter is receiving too much money ($13 million a year) yet the place has rats and raccons. I hope this place is investigated and everyone is fired. The place can't shut down though. Too many kids living there.

They didn't find her yet, but some families might benefit from her case:

Chief Lanier answers questions in Relisha Rudd case

WASHINGTON (WJLA) - D.C.'s Police Chief is clearing a man who was
questioned in the disappearance of Relisha Rudd. The little girl was
last seen more than a month ago. And the city's top cop spent Wednesday
morning answering questions about the investigation.

D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier said Wednesday that the
investigation is still ongoing, but that the man in the newest
surveillance video released by detectives has been cleared.

Meanwhile, D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray has ordered two deputy mayors to
conduct a review of the case of missing eight-year-old Rudd, and
discussed on Wednesday the D.C. General Family Homeless Shelter, where
Rudd was residing when she disappeared.

"It is not a place that a child should be raised, clearly," he said.

The shelter is where eight-year-old Rudd lived with her mother and
brothers; it is also where she met janitor Khalil Tatum, her alleged
abductor, and one of the last places she was seen alive more than one
month ago.

"I'd like to close D.C. General, but we've got to have a place people can go in crisis," said Gray.

"They would have to provide somewhere else for us to go -- if not,
look how many familes and kids will be on the streets, some people
literally have no place to go," said one mother who lives at the shelter
with her five-year-old son. He went to school with Relisha Rudd.

He nodded when we asked her whether he missed his friend.

The mayor said plans are in the works to move 500 homeless families
in 100 days into housing. This is in process as Police Chief Cathy
Lanier was asked on WTOP about the possibility of Rudd being the victim
of child sex trafficking.

In response, Lanier said: "We are exploring all those avenues. We
have experts on our team that have been leading our investigation from
our child exploitation task force that are working with the FBI."

Rudd’s grandmother and aunt provided two pictures today to ABC 7
News, and told us that Tatum bought Rudd the dress and sweater last
November for her to wear this upcoming Easter.

The women are asking the public for help and that if anyone finds the
clothing discarded, this might help in the search for Relisha.

Lanier also said on WTOP that police do not think the man seen in the
video walking around a metro station recently was involved in any way
with the little girl's disappearance. That man, who is not being
identified, came to police. He did have contact with Khalil Tatum.

"He actually came to us himself when he heard his picture was out
there," said Chief Lanier. "Really nothing new has come out of that. It
really wasn't something that we anticipated getting a lot of information
out of, but we want to leave no stone unturned."

Lanier still holds out hope that the child is alive but admits
getting such a late start on the search frusturates her. And when police
determined the timing of the purchase of trash bags by Tatum and the
fact that he spent time at Kenilworth Park made them very concerned. The
51- year old janitor was found dead of an apparent self inflicted
gunshot wound at the park. No clues of Relisha Rudd were found.

The chief says there are many different angles they are exploring -
including working with the child exploitation task force for the
potential of sex trafficking. The mayor says there is no indication the
city has mishandled the investigation.

Protection order against Relisha Rudd's mother issued

WASHINGTON (WUSA9) The WUSA9 Investigative Team has obtained court documents showing a protection order against Relisha Rudd's mother, Shamika Young, and a major split in the Rudd family.

Update: Shortly after this story posted, someone texted from a telephone number known to be used by Shamika Young, saying she was not involved in the altercation and that the individual who was acted in self-defense.

WUSA9 was unable to verify the identity of the texter.

A judge issued a temporary protection order Monday in response to claims from Relisha's grandmother, Melissa Young, that Shamika Young attacked her own mother.

"My daughter physically assaulted me with the help of…" Melissa Young names two others in the alleged fight, but WUSA9 is withholding their names because the court did not issue protection orders against them.

The grandmother says the assault occurred at 8:00 pm, Saturday night at 1900 Massachusetts Ave. S.E., which is the address of the DC General Homeless Shelter.

The temporary order requires Relisha's mother to have no contact with the grandmother or her husband George Turner "in any manner" including "telephone, text" or "social media" even "through a third party."

As a temporary protection order, it will only be in effect until a hearing where Relisha's mom will have the opportunity to give her side of the story.

The hearing for an extended protection order is scheduled for June 2nd

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